Adelaide Hills: Where to eat, drink and shop | delicious.SA: Regional 50

Just 20 minutes from the CBD, the Adelaide Hills offers a world of casual and fine dining, wineries, breweries and great produce to bring home. Here are our tips on where to go.

Explore the beautiful Adelaide Hills.

Just 20 minutes from the CBD, the Adelaide Hills offers a world of casual and fine dining, wineries, breweries and great produce to bring home. Here are our tips on where to go.

BRUNCH | CASUAL LUNCH

Heading into the Adelaide Hills can lead you along many a winding road and fortunately a good scattering of village eateries across the region helps if the driving and spectacular scenery makes you hungry.

If you’re heading up the South-Eastern Freeway, stop off in Stirling for a coffee and pastry at the Stirling Cellars and Patisserie – the bottle shop with good Hills focus will distract you as well. Or take a different tack at Red Cacao with a specialist hot or cold chocolate; their own range of truffles, ganaches, waffles and cakes take pride of place.

For lunch, Stirling’s Angler boutique fish and chippery features all sustainable, seasonal, fresh species with charcoal grill and aged cuts.

Smashed avocado at Fred Eatery, Aldgate. Picture: Dianne Mattsson

Fred Eatery in Aldgate starts the day with a bang – literally, their breakfast menu includes all the regulars and Malaysian Bang Bang satay and salad, all day brekkie and Asian and Middle Eastern lunch dishes.

Mylor cafe hits the eggs-every-way menu big time, with toasties and extravagant sandwiches as well; a top stop for a quality coffee and relaxing under the trees.

Other villages also worth your first stop of the day include Gumeracha, at The Good Pantry for a terrific choice of on-the-road lunch eats, and Lobethal at Emma and Ivory for good coffee and health-conscious bowls and dishes. Nairne’s Pallet cafe is a rallying point in that township, while Mount Barker’s Sazon Espresso adds a Mexican vibe to its breakfast and lunch menu – quesadillas a specialty.

Uraidla Republic cafe and bakery – excellent on both counts – also adds in its own brewery ambience and bottle shop. It’s connected to the Uraidla Hotel as well; you could easily spend much of the day here.

For more ideas on where to eat, check out our delicious.SA: Regional 50 guide for the best restaurants for your road trip.

Crafers Hotel offers a French-style menu. Picture: Supplied

PUBS | WINERIES | BARS

Other standout pubs where the food, beer, wine and bar mix are Hills attractions in their own right are the Crafers Hotel, with its French style menu, The Stirling with a range of Grill restaurant, pizza and main bar menus, and the Stanley Bridge Tavern with its clever local and international bottle shop offer and fine country cooking.

Winery cellar doors are such a focus across the region, with platters, cheese plates and tasting snacks at every stop. Those with an extra lunch offer, often weekends only, include the intimate and welcoming Lobethal Road with well credentialed Frank McWilliams cooking seasonal, contemporary dishes.

Golding Wines’ Ginkgo restaurant near Lobethal has three and four-course, seasonal menus, while Macclesfield’s Longview Vineyard’s platters go up a notch and long group lunches are a specialty. At Nairne, Howard Vineyard’s kitchen looks towards East Asia in its restaurant and casual menu.

Greenhill Wines also offers delightful provincial French and Mediterranean dishes in a little cafe-bistro cellar door venue at the city side of Summertown – it’s also one of four cellar doors in a new Piccadilly Trail that connects them with Ashton Hills Vineyard, CRFT Wines and Tapanappa Wines within the Piccadilly Valley district. Plan a day’s tour – it’s under 30 minutes from the Adelaide CBD.

With so many wineries in the region, there are understandably few wine bars, though the gorgeous Hugel bar/eatery in Lobethal offers a next-gen set of very smart wines and gins, many of them Hills sourced, with a clever and tasty snack, smalls and share menu that’s worth a chilled lunch break as well as Friday and Saturday nights.

Lot 100 showcases many Adelaide Hills producers.

DISTILLERIES | BREWERIES

It’s not all about wine, of course, as the Hills are now home to many of the better local distilleries and breweries. Lot 100 on the outskirts of Nairne brings together Mismatch Brewing, Adelaide Hills Cider, Adelaide Hills Distillery, Ashton Valley Fresh juices, and Vinteloper Wines as well as a range of casual and finer dining.

Other distilleries include Ambleside specialising in gin at Hahndorf, and Applewood has an inventive cellar door range of gins, liqueurs, bitters and cellos at Gumeracha.

Lobethal Bierhaus has long been a port of call for its artisan beers and hearty food, Prancing Pony brewery in Totness, just north of the Mount Barker freeway turnoff, goes for a German feel in its food with big beers beside them, while Left Barrel Brewing in Balhannah is a dog and family friendly weekend venue with pizzas for sustenance.

Saul and Sheree Sullivan, owners of Udder Delights in Hahndorf. Picture: Tom Huntley

PRODUCE | SHOPPING

If you’re still hungry on your way home, there’s no way you can leave the Adelaide Hills without a swag of produce, from Saturday morning farmers markets at Mount Barker and up north on the cusp of the Barossa at Mount Pleasant, as well as roadside stalls like the apples and seasonal fruits along Onkaparinga Valley Rd near Balhannah.

Cheese nuts can head to Woodside Cheese Wrights on the edge of Woodside village, and the Udder Delights outlet in Hahndorf. Other foods and treats make up a big range of shopping at Stirling’s Laneways markets through the township on the fourth Sunday or every month.